Parallels
by tiltingaxis
Summary: She has plans for everything. For Sectionals, for Regionals, for Nationals. She has plans for New York and what she's going to do once she gets there. Finn contemplates his past and present loves. F/R, post Duets


**A/N: Re-upload. AU post 2x04. **

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><p>"<em>If that Puckerman kid ever gets out of jail he's gonna beat my ass. I'm sure you've still got feelings for her too."<em>

"_Oh no, no, no way. I'm with Rachel now. I mean, she's a lot shorter than Quinn and she talks a lot, but I'm in love with her."_

He thinks about it a lot after Sam says that. It really gets him thinking. Not like, in a way where he thinks Sam is right or anything, cause he totally means what he said, he's with Rachel now and he's in love with her. And yeah, he also said that he's probably always going to have feelings for Quinn, cause that's true too (Sometimes, the feelings he gets for her are really, really bad, really negative feelings, but that's beside the point.). Him and Quinn, well they're complicated. Actually, they were really simple, but then they got really complicated when he started to think about Rachel more and more and about Quinn less and less and she decided to give it up to Puck because of it. At least, partly because of it. He had some responsibility in all the shit that went down. He knows that if his head hadn't been filled to the brim with Rachel Berry and her voice and the way he almost blew his load when he had her underneath him, that Quinn probably wouldn't have gone and did it with his dickhead of a bestfriend and got knocked up and lied to him about it.

But whatever. He doesn't even care about that anymore. Well, at least not as much. It's still embarrassing as hell that he got played like that and he still gets crazy pissed sometimes when he thinks about it for too long, but his mom told him once about how when one door closes another one opens, or something like that. And he figures it's the Quinn door that was shut in his face and left him out in the cold, but it's the Rachel door that opened up and let him in. And the Rachel door is better. The Rachel door is way better. The Rachel door has cookies and banana bread and a really, really awesome, tiny little spitfire that can tie his stomach all up in knots when she just smiles at him, who tells him she's the happiest she's ever been because of him and who always makes his heart feel like it's going to burst every single second they're together.

So yeah, he means it when he says that he's not going to go back knocking on the Quinn door, not when the Rachel door is wide open. Really, not ever.

He's not confused about it. He's generally confused about a lot of things, but not about this, because duh, it's obvious that he's totally in love with Rachel. So yeah, clearly, he gets it. It's everybody else that's the problem. This, he finds confusing. People talk. And most of the time, they really don't even bother trying to be discreet about it. So he knows everybody is expecting him to go running back to Quinn any day now. He can hear it in the hallway sometimes, people wondering about what the hell he's doing with Rachel Berry when everybody knows he's meant to be with Quinn Fabray. Seriously. It pisses him off. A lot.

The Glee Club don't do that though. He figures the Glee kids are really the only people in the whole school who know the three of them well enough to know it's not going to happen. Heck the Glee kids probably realize that him and Rachel? They're kind of perfect for each other. They're kind of meant to be.

He hears people talking about how annoying Rachel is and how she's bossy and crazy and selfish. And he's not gonna lie, they're kind of true. But he could totally say the same thing about Quinn though. Like, if he ever wants to compare or anything. Rachel and Quinn, they're kind of the same in some ways.

Like Rach, she's a planner. She plans. A lot. Quinn plans too. When they were still together, Quinn planned their dates and stuff. She planned which parties they should go to and which places were cool for them to hang out (The mall? Yes. Bowling? No. So he goes bowling on his own cause it's fun and he loves it.). She'd tell him that these things are important, that they need to pick the right places, talk with the right people so that their status as the coolest couple in school would be in the bag. Honestly, he had no idea that being a couple would be so exhausting, or that it would require more than just two people who dig each other.

She planned out their conversations in public and planned out all the ways that he could touch her when people were looking and he just went along with it all cause it made her happy and he didn't really care. Sometimes he did though. Sometimes he wished he could just be himself and she could just be herself and they could just be themselves together, because he liked it better that way. But she told him that being themselves weren't going to get them those Prom King and Prom Queen crowns when they're in their senior year and Finn never mentioned it again.

And now that he's with Rachel, he notices that she plans a lot too. She has plans for everything. For Sectionals, for Regionals, for Nationals. She has plans for New York and what she's going to do once she gets there. She plans the Broadway performances she's going to be in and what age she's going to win a Tony (twenty five) and the first movie she's going to star in (a tragic drama of circumstances, she says, ala Sophie's Choice. When he looks at her blankly, she forces him to watch it with her on their next date. He finds himself holding a blubbering Rachel and wonders why girls love to watch movies that are depressing as hell. He himself prefers zombies. Or maybe robots.).

So really, it's only natural that she plans them too. She plans out all their possible dates on the new couples calendar she made once they "reunited, despite all of the obstacles in our way". She uses her pink pen to write in her neat little loops all the things she wants them to do together and she sticks little gold stars in all the boxes of things they've done. The calendar she had given him came with a simple black inky pen that she wrapped in a tiny little bow and handed it to him nervously two days after summer began.

"This is for you," she told him shyly. "So you can write down the things that _you_ want us to do together." He grinned down at the excitement on her face and the first thing he wrote in an empty box was bowling. She bought him a boxful of stickers of tiny little footballs and he couldn't wipe off that dumb grin on his face when he sticks the first one over their bowling date.

Rachel's controlling (Controllist isn't a word she tells him, and he thinks Quinn would probably roll her eyes and call him an idiot instead.). That's another thing where they're like, kind of the same, Quinn and Rachel. Finn thinks being controlling probably comes with the package of being a planner. He's neither so he wouldn't really know. Quinn loves to be in control. He guesses that you don't get to be Sue Sylvester's head cheerleader if you don't. She liked it when her life was predictable, when she knew her place and everybody else knew theirs too. When they were together, she told him who he should be friends with and who he shouldn't be friends with. At the time he was kind of glad she was around, cause he was new to the whole being popular thing, and it was really hard trying to keep track of what was cool and what wasn't. And she was a lot of help. She made sure his feet would stay firmly on the cool side and when he did something totally lame, like when he opened a door for that wheelchair kid, she'd patiently (well, patient for Quinn) tell him that Finn Hudson don't do things like open doors for losers or smile at the gay kid who liked to stare at him. See? The whole being popular thing was really hard stuff.

But then when he got used to being popular, the controlling side of Quinn really started to bug him. Cause he knew it, okay? He knew it wasn't cool to sing those lame 80s rock music when they were in his car and that he needed to do all those stupid things the jocks wanted to so that he'd be up there on their list so that their Prom King and Prom Queen crowns would be safe or whatever. And he knew she said that they weren't supposed to do it too cause they love Jesus or whatever and having sex when you're not married is a total sin, even though sometimes it felt like she didn't actually believe it either. Sometimes it felt like she totally bent over in that tiny ass Cheerios skirt in front of him on purpose cause she had this smile on her face right after. Or sometimes when they made out and she pressed herself all up against him that way, it always felt like she did it on purpose, like it was another thing she was trying to control too. And then in the end, well he knew she never really did believe all those things she told him, cause she did it with Puck and she got knocked up and she _lied_ to him.

And when Quinn lost control and lost everything too, it felt a little like his heart was broken. But it also felt a lot like someone had just released him from a chokehold.

And now he's with Rachel. And Rachel's a different kind of controlling. Like, she's trying to get him to stop eating all this 'junk food' he likes, like Oreos and Yoohoos and fried Twinkies and stuff, and it's totally annoying the way she goes on and on about it. But then, she bakes him her banana bread and she makes him those awesome sugar cookies and she says that they're 'organic', whatever that means. And then she says that she'd keep making them for him if he stops eating those 'disgusting, empty calories', and he thinks he could be down with that. If she could be down with baking like, a dozen of those things a week and making all those cookies for him anytime he wants them. She gets this crazy, determined look on her face when he tells her that and she says that she will. So far it's kind of fifty-fifty. He thinks probably some day he's going to have to give up those Oreos and fried Twinkies because Rachel Berry gets what she wants but right now, he's totally getting the best of both worlds.

And then there's the really bad side of Rachel being controlling, like leading Sunshine, the transfer chick, to a crack den, which is kind of screwing them over these days since Glee club needs all the talent it can get. Or that whole deal where she was trying to make him choose between her and football. That was harsh. And really unfair. Although, okay he kind of gets why she did it. It's kind of like him not wanting her to parade around school looking so obviously hot and stuff cause he loves the fact that she's sneaky hot and that he's the only one who really knows just how hot she is. And also because she was afraid he was going to dump her for Santana and Brittany again once he got popular again, which kind of hurt a little since he didn't even dump her for them that first time. He dumped her to find his inner (and actually kind of non-existent) rockstar. And plus, he wasn't in love with her then (well, maybe he was a little).

He's really glad she stopped doing that. Control him that way, he means. For a while it felt a little like that old uncomfortable chokehold was coming back, but now it just feels like a really tight, but really snug grip on his arm. He doesn't mind it so much, the other stuff. Like her wanting their kids to be Jewish. He's totally fine with that since he doesn't even know if he believes in God anyway these days and he kind of likes the thought of his children not having to worry about that, about faith.

She told him they weren't going to do it until she's twenty five. That sucks. He knows it probably means that he's a douchebag, but he's trying to work on bringing that number down. Sometimes he thinks it's probably working because even though his mailman problem comes every single time they make out, he still notices they way her body trembles when his hands make their way onto her skin and the way she grips his arms really, really tight and breathes all shallow against his ear when his lips hover just above her pulse point. She made this really hot sound between a moan and a squeak the last time she allowed him to get to second base again, and he thinks it's really, really awesome that he's the one who makes her lose control like that.

If anyone ever asks him and if he's not allowed to lie about it, he'd have to tell them that he had been in love with Quinn. Not like he is with Rachel though. Being in love with Quinn was easy. She was beautiful and popular and sweet (when she wanted to be) and well, like he said, they were simple. Being in love with Quinn was simple. Until it wasn't. Until Rachel arrived and he realized loving Quinn and loving Rachel were two completely opposite things. One was easy and safe (until easy and safe turned into a backstabbing bitch), and the other was terrifying and risky (until she turned into the best source of comfort he ever knew).

He'd be lying through his teeth if he says he doesn't miss Quinn. He does. He misses Quinn like he misses everything else about his old life. Back in his old life, he had it easy. He didn't have to worry about some dumbass throwing a slushie at his girl or deal with all the drama that comes with Rachel's tiny package. He was popular, and he meant really, really popular. Azimio and Karofsky used to be nothing, barely blips on his radar. He was the football captain, the big man on campus. He was Finn Hudson. And well, it's hard not to miss that. It's impossible not to miss that.

But if anyone ever wants to know, if anyone ever asks, he'll tell them, in a heartbeat, that he wouldn't change a thing. Not one thing. Yeah, he's kind of lame now. And yeah, Azimio and Karofsky are motherfucking jackasses and a pain in his ass. But he's happy. That's the difference. He never was back in his old life. He thought he was, but he really wasn't. He was just too stupid to know any better. Now he does, now he's got something worth fighting for, worth putting up with the daily torments of his bullies. And Rachel, well Rachel's kind of the reason for that, he figures. Now he's Finn Hudson, and it doesn't mean much to the rest of the school. But it means something to Rachel. And it means something to Glee. So even though it's hard for him to remember most of the time, he knows that it's really all that matters.

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><p><strong>And then... Rachel cheated on him with Puck and Fuinn 2.0 happened. Oh well... LOL. Reviews to authors are what crack is to druggies ;p<strong>


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